Friday, 27 November 2015

Pi Zero soldering

Well, yesterday was certainly exciting! The launch of Pi Zero was an amazing, fun and rewarding day. I'd tried to warn as many people as I could that they should get down to the shops early or - even better - reserve a copy of The MagPi in advance.

Quite a few of my Y5-6 CodeClub listened and demanded politely asked that their parents get them a copy on their way to work. One boy was amusingly concerned at lunchtime when I told him that some shops had already sold out!

I was also pleased to see that the work we've been doing has got them thinking along the right lines: the first thing they asked when I showed them the Pi Zero was 'how do we connect things to those funny GPIO pins?" I showed them the Pi Zero I had in the Zero Bot and the female header I'd used on that.

When I explained that all you had to do was solder on a header, those who made the DIY Gamer kits last year seemed fairly relaxed. Some of the new clubbers, especially those who hadn't done any soldering before, looked less convinced. Even after showing them the excellent page of instructions in the MagPi, a couple said that it looked really complicated.

So I decided to put together a short video to cover the procedure. I thought it came out quite well and so I thought I'd share it more widely.